Kanban burndown chart

Key features of Kanban burndown chart

A Kanban burndown chart makes progress visible, highlights delivery trends, and helps teams forecast work scope confidently, whether you're tracking one or several Kanban teams across multiple boards.

Unlike traditional BI dashboards that rely on scheduled data imports, our Agile Burnup Burndown Charts gadget delivers real-time charts that reflect the latest Jira updates instantly.

The burndown chart for Jira Kanban Boards automatically generates forecasts based on your team’s historical minimum, average, and maximum velocity (throughput in case you use issue count):

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How different roles use burndown charts in Kanban

✅ Product manager: I need a realistic view of delivery timelines. The burndown chart for a kanban board gives me accurate forecasts based on actual team throughput and lets me run what-if scenarios to evaluate delivery options. It helps me align expectations with stakeholders, adjust priorities, and cut scope when needed.

✅ Delivery Manager: I oversee multiple Kanban teams in the Jira dashboard. I rely on the burndown chart to spot delivery risks early and monitor how backlog dynamics affect the remaining work. Features like forecast lines, scope growth simulation, and filtering by epics or teams let me make confident, data-driven decisions.

✅ Marketing manager: I often prepare campaigns around fixed event dates. The Kanban burndown chart gadget helps me understand what features will likely be delivered on time, so I can align messaging and assets accordingly. By visualizing delivery risks, I can coordinate with product teams early and adapt plans when priorities shift.

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1. Key feature: Built-in forecasts

The chart automatically generates forecasts for Kanban teams based on selected completed intervals (days, weeks, bi-weeks, etc.) and estimation units (issue count, story points, time estimates, etc.).  It calculates past delivery velocity/throughput and applies it to remaining work, helping teams estimate how long it will take to finish - no manual input required.

Forecasts are based on:

• Minimum velocity (throughput) - slowest delivery pace
• Average velocity (throughput)- typical throughput
• Maximum velocity (throughput)- best-case speed

⚙️Default settings:

• Interval - last 6 bi-weeks
• Grouping - bi-weekly
• Estimation unit - issue count

The “Built-in forecasts” feature is useful for:

• Estimation of delivery dates with confidence using historical velocity (throughput) from one or multiple Kanban boards
• Sharing realistic, optimistic, and conservative timelines to align expectations across teams and stakeholders
• Spotting potential delivery delays early and acting before they impact your flow

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2. Key feature:  Simulation of growing remaining work

Your work scope keeps evolving and growing - model how it impacts delivery.
Use the Kanban burn-down chart in the Jira dashboard to simulate scope growth and forecast completion with two smart configuration options:

• Remaining work growth - add a custom growth rate for the scope (e.g., 5 more work items are added each two weeks) per future interval (1️⃣) and instantly see how delivery dates shift (2️⃣):

• Custom remaining work - simulate a specific Kanban backlog size (1️⃣) to see how it affects forecasted completion (2️⃣):

The “Growth simulation for the remaining work” feature is useful for:

• Modeling dynamic Kanban backlogs that grow over time
• Forecasting delivery dates under different work scope growth scenarios
• Identifying delivery risks early when the scope is expected to expand

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3. Key feature: What-if scenarios

Need to answer “What if velocity (throughput) changes?” or “What can we deliver by this date?”
Use the Kanban burndown chart in Jira to test different forecasting assumptions by specifying:

• What-if velocity (throughput)
• What-if date

With our custom what-if scenarios, you can set a velocity (throughput) (1️⃣) to see how it shifts your projected completion date or enter a target delivery date (2️⃣) to find out the velocity (throughput) your team needs to hit:

The “What-if scenarios” feature is useful for:

• Simulating best-case, worst-case, or even stretch-plan outcomes on the Jira dashboard
• Adapting to shifting priorities by simulating different target delivery speeds and dates to understand how changes affect your completion timeline

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4. Key feature: Visual deadlines with target lines

Add target lines with exact dates to your Kanban burndown report in Jira to visualize whether you're on track, ahead, or behind:

The “Target lines” feature is useful for:

• Visualizing important delivery dates directly on the chart gadget on your Jira dashboard, so your team always sees where the deadline is
• Aligning team efforts with fixed milestones or product release dates
• Tracking delivery progress against goals - see at a glance if you’re on track or falling behind
• Reducing uncertainty in long-term planning by anchoring forecasts to specific timeframes

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Additional features: Breakdowns and advanced filtering

Unlock deeper insights with work breakdowns and filters. Click on any chart interval - completed or future - and scroll down to explore detailed metrics. For completed intervals, the chart displays data on completed work; for future intervals, you’ll see remaining work projections. In this example, the features for the completed interval will be explained.

The kanban burndown chart example above highlights the following elements:

• Work breakdown (1️⃣) - analyze completed work for the selected kanban board by issue type and priority. See total issue count, how each type contributes (%), and how values changed since the previous interval (trend). You can switch to other breakdown options beyond issue type and priority.
• Issue list (2️⃣) - browse completed issues with default key details like issue key, summary, issue count, and add optional fields if needed (e.g., assignee, status). Sort by columns and dynamically filter the list by clicking on work breakdown values.

• Issue filter (3️⃣) - refine your view using toggles for parent/sub-tasks, filters by epics or releases, or automatically validated custom JQL queries.

These features help Kanban teams stay in control of delivery by turning raw scope data into actionable, easy-to-navigate insights.

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What about a native Kanban burndown chart in Jira

There is no native Jira Kanban burndown chart. You won’t find built-in forecasting, deadlines, or what-if simulations for any work scope.

With the Kanban burndown chart gadget from this interactive example, you can:

• Use the chart as a gadget directly on your Jira dashboard
• Build a Kanban burndown chart for any work scope
• Get forecasts based on past delivery trends
• Set target lines for deadlines and monitor progress
• Model completion dates or required velocity with what-if scenarios

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Advantages of using the Kanban burndown report

• Flexible forecast modeling with custom scenarios
• Multiple side-by-side charts to compare different Kanban teams or scopes on the Jira dashboard
• Scope growth simulation by modeling backlog expansion per interval to evaluate its impact on delivery timelines
• Deadline visualization by adding custom target lines to track progress against fixed dates
• Advanced filtering by epics, releases, or custom JQL to tailor the chart to your exact needs
• Detailed work breakdowns for selected past and future intervals and the upcoming forecasted delivery

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Apps used in this Kanban burndown chart example

Use our examples to build your use cases on the Jira dashboard.

Both Jira apps (plugins) used in these examples have a 30-day free trial and are completely free for teams under 10 people:

Agile Burnup Burndown Charts Agile Reports and Gadgets

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